On kink identity and fetishising being "normal"

The latest essay in on the idea of "normal" and the surprising erotic excitement which comes with it, on kinksters with double lives, on outsider identities and why we have to still resist stigma even if being deviant is part of the fun. Kim Kardashian in a Balenciaga nylon catsuit doesn't have much to do with it – apart from accidentally transgressing the normative dresscode, kids in tow. And Patrick Bateman is an illustration for my degradation kink which involves nice suits – and the suit is Valentino so here you go.   

I have a very specific kink that I sometimes (ok, always) talk about. And that is degrading people in very nice suits. Quite a confession – but hear me out. There is more to this than just clothes – but rather a lot of intertwined ideas of who we are, how we’re seen, and how “normal” we’re allowed to be.

Being erotically mean to someone wearing a nice suit is probably my most recurring fantasy which I haven’t identified as kink until recently. When I was 23 and just moved to London, every time I walked through the city I fantasised about putting bankers on their knees. These fantasies would always unfold in very nicely designed rooms with a lot of beautiful surfaces – hotel rooms, meeting rooms or mirror paneled lifts. I didn’t think too much into what these fantasies were about, but it excited me – the idea of using sex to take someone’s power, or the idea of using sex for coming into my own.

Up to this day, I am not sure whether this fantasy is incredibly niche or very banal – possibly both. Fantasising about crumpling someone’s shirt and making them sweat has to do with ruining things that are perfect – perfectly composed, perfectly ironed, perfectly fitted. Thinking about someone putting in a lot of time and effort into looking this immaculate – to make it a total mess just for fun, just for my pleasure, just because I wanted.

And then, of course, it’s about power. Nicely fitted suits are supposed to come with money, jobs, lifestyles – and occasionally (often) obnoxious self-assurance and a sense of entitlement. Being a young Russian immigrant in London, I felt like I could have a little bit of that, absorb it through consumption, inhabit the ghostly skin of a messed up slate-grey Ermenegildo Zegna two-piece with all its glorious potentiality.

We rarely think of sexual fantasies as a creative space – not just jerk-off material but scripts exploring settings, archetypes, mental states and social roles. A suit, among other things, is coded with being acknowledged as respectable and being good at social performance. It’s connected to a broader idea of being perceived as “normal”. The idea of “normal”, although being an opposition of deviant, can be, in fact, quite exciting in kink.

As a kinkster, sometimes you meet someone in a social situation, like in the shop or a work meeting when you’re both in your “normal” social persona – but you can’t help wondering if they are also into some of these things, or whether they might also have a bit of secret personality. Would they appreciate a red latex catsuit? Have they ever experimented with pain? The more “normal” they look, the more exciting the idea. This excitement is rooted in the separation between kink and daily life – and the very idea of “normal” we have to fit into, an immense source of shame, self-doubt and erotic tension.

For me personally, the relationship with the notion of normal expands much further than kink. In my daily life, I inhabit a couple more outsider identities apart from being a kinkster: an immigrant and a queer. I also happen to be incredibly privileged to pass. I am a femme bisexual queer and a white immigrant – so you wouldn’t know these things by just looking at me. This has given me ways to slip into so many contexts where I wouldn’t be welcome otherwise – while also giving me a major impostor syndrome. I also sometimes experience a strange amusement of looking at the situation from the outside and thinking wow, they have no idea I’m actually a wild animal in a human suit.

At a dinner party, I sometimes stop and think, Am I doing this right? Am I saying the right things? As if waiting till I get home so I can unzip my carefully curated presentable skin and just chill on the sofa as a much stranger werewolf-esque creature I am. This is an experience familiar to many people – we get othered all the time for so many different reasons. But what happens when you add sexuality to the equation?

Being into kink often means having a double identity. It means having things you keep away from people outside lovers, play partners and the community. It is true about sexuality in general – but with kink, the separation is more extreme. Your shadow self is a bag of gear under your bed, a hard point in your ceiling, a latex catsuit drying in the bathroom – all evidence of your connection to activities that are classified as deviant.

To a degree, deviance is part of the fun. Kink is beautiful and liberating, but at times it’s also messy, filthy, risky and terrifying. The fact that kink is separated from the day-to-day reality makes it an adrenaline-fuelled intimate escape. After a stressful day at work I would sometimes think how much I would love to put some latex on – just to evoke that feeling of having another personality in another universe resigning in the same body which I use to do my daily little tasks.

The idea of normal, however, is also connected to stigma – and stigma is certainly not hot. Stigma is when your universe shrinks, stigma is denying equal possibilities to people just based on their sexual culture. For those of us who can shapeshift into a performance of normality, it might be bearable, but there would always be people who are much more at loss. Sex workers, people who don’t fit into the gender binary, queer people from conservative backgrounds – as part of these categories you might be allowed to be normal, but also might not. There are things to lose – and there always will be.

I believe that sometimes being outside of “normal” is good for empathy. It helps us to see complexity in other people, to be more understanding. If latex is drag, then normal clothes, like suits, are also drag. Unless, of course, normal clothes are drag while latex is who we really are – but this is a different conversation.

Thank you for your support as always xxx